Topic on Talk:New Editor Experiences

Answer is: not really. Ranking the personas numerically would require a different type of research.

The personas you devise in the “Motivations for Editing Wikipedia” section should, indeed, be  quite useful for understanding what drives users. There’s one thing I wonder if you can add that would make these even more useful, especially for product people like me.

I’d like to know which  of the six personas you think are the most common? This might help us understand whose problems to aim our products at, especially if we want to have the biggest impact. Such info can also be useful when we’re advocating for or explaining product choices. (For that reason, it would be most desirable if you could add remarks on the subject to the actual report, if possible—for citation.)

You don’t need to break out the statistics; just say which personas, in your estimation, are the the top two or three, perhaps? A ranking would be most welcome, along with any insights you care to pass on, of course.

Thank you for your note, @JMatazzoni (WMF) :)

@Neil P. Quinn-WMF and I could put our heads together and go through the list of all the participants, and add up which personas are associated with the most respondents. However, I am not sure this would be an accurate representation of the numbers, or priorities you are asking for. What you are asking for, needs proper statistically significant research. Qualitative work like this contextual inquiry, is not statistically significant.

However, there is work that could be done, to help us better understand the numbers of people coming to various wikis, their motivations, and perhaps, how many fit under each "motivation bucket". Think of the "Why we read Wikipedia" research that @LZia (WMF) and team did about the motivations of people reading Wikipedia. @LZia (WMF) has proposed similar research for "Why we edit Wikipedia", and if that work could get done, we would be able to answer your question with more confidence.

All this said, I think we can answer the question about which persona is most important to focus on, if we think about the problems (or opportunities) we want to and are able to address (from the findings of the research), and then ask ourselves, which personas we need to focus on for that solution or opportunity.

Another thing to remember, is that while we focus on new editor experiences and needs, we also need to very closely, keep in mind the experiences and needs of experienced editors, curators, page patrollers, and all the contributors on wiki who are already working with new editors, and otherwise deal with the work that comes with more new editors. In order to keep these people in mind as we work, we have pragmatic personas, and to fill in the gaps (since those personas are "pragmatic") we will most likely reach out in various ways to ensure that our goals of retaining more new editors, will not impede or poorly impact the work of experienced contributors.

Any chance the Wayne persona can be updated? I don't think the VE concern (cited on the on the last line) was ever that common, and it must be pretty much nonexistent by now.

I can think of a lot of replacement concerns. A good catch-all would be 'Wishes there was more community input before new products are built'. If you want something VE-specific 'Rarely finds VE useful, believes new users are better off with wikitext'.

P.S. The persona cites Kindle and Android. However whenever mobile issues arise a chorus of complaints arise from this persona. They've never even seen the mobile-only feature before, it's effectively invisible to us. People freak out when the WMF adds invisible mobile-only content we can't see or fix. (Such as the Related Article feature, and there's currently a storm over Wikidata article descriptions, and I bet almost no one knows you're pointlessly posting "Last edited by username" at the bottom of mobile.) It seems that the typical "power editor" generally considers desktop the only suitable platform for real work.

Hi @Alsee,

Thank you for your note. I agree that Wayne and all of the pragmatic personas should be updated, and will remember your suggestions when it happens. It is helpful to hear your feedback on mobile, specifically helpful for iterating the persona, and useful feedback in general for WMF.